Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

79 JEHUDAH HALEVI

A thing may be which is both good and evil,
Prov. 3,8; 14,30. That hath in it both marrow and rottenness

for the bones:
isa. 8,21. If a man wax wrathful he curseth his day,
And denounceth his angered moments;
Yet that is the day that others bless,
job 21,13. The very day they spend in pleasantness.

Moreover, all food in the mouth of the healthy

man is like honey,
But honey in the mouth of the sick is like
juniper.¹

And as for him that sorroweth, the lights are

dark to his eyes:
He seeth them not—they are hidden from him—
Ex. 40,35. Like mine eyes, on this day when the cloud
resteth upon them,
When they pour forth floods at the parting

from Moses—
The fount of wisdom, in whose mouth I find
The place of gold, the mine of purest ore.

Friendship bound up my soul with his soul
While the chariots of flight were not yet
harnessed,

While as yet my soul had not adventured upon
parting,

And the sons of the days were all with us
complete.

The daughters of the days did bear us singly,
But the daughter of love bore us as twins,
cant. 5,13. In faithfulness, upon a bed of spices,

¹ Compare Marcus Aurelius: VI, lii.